Eyes Wide Open - Quirky Crafts Challenge #1

Happy New Year........!!

Eyes Wide Open - Challenge  #1 2014

I want to start by wishing you all a very Happy New Year.  I hope you enjoyed your Christmas holiday and that it was as special as you wanted it to be....

We had a lovely Christmas, just the two of us, cosy, quiet and magical.  I'm a big kid when it comes to Christmas, I absolutely love it and even start thinking about it at the end of summer - that's terrible..!

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of New Year celebrations, It always makes me quite emotional and sentimental......That's why I was so pleased to see what this challenge was, because I knew that I was going to try and make it bright and cheerful, to start the new year..!!

This weeks challenge is called 'Eyes Wide Open' and projects have to include anything eye related, and these characters with big eyes were just perfect.  The digi stamps were provided by Stitchy Bear Stamps.  The images were beautiful and I had such a difficult job choosing which one I wanted to use.  I finally decided on the image called 'Just Purr-Fect', is so cute!

I absolutely love colouring, and these images were ideal to sit down with on a cold, dark, dreary day and spend a few hours colouring them in - I can't think of anything better!

I decided to make a canvas for this DT project.....

I started by making the background.  I knew that I wanted it to be vibrant and cheerful to start the new year, so I used Dylusions ink sprays. Whilst the colour was still wet, I sprinkled the canvas with salt and dried it with a heat tool.  When you then scrape the salt off, it leaves a gorgeous mottled effect on the background. I used yellows, turquoise, and orange for my background. When the spray inks were dry, I used a Cosmic Shimmer Mist in pale gold to spritz through a stencil to give another layer and some subtle sparkle. Unfortunately it doesn't show up in the photographs, but it does have a great shimmer in the light.

 

I wanted my image to have a vibrancy to it so I used Dylusions inks again, but this time I had decanted the inks into water-brushes to enable me to paint with them - it's great!

I coloured her hair using lemon zest, pure sunshine, and melted chocolate. The colours blend beautifully together. I was really pleased with how she turned out, just as I'd hoped...

I stamped out some images of flowers and a butterfly, coloured them and arranged them on the canvas.

At the last minute, I decided to emboss a metal flower and leaf. I thought it would add some dimension to the piece. You can just make out the embossing on the flower and leaf, but I think it gives the canvas texture and depth which it needed.

To finish it off, I wrote 'I only have eyes for you' in a black brush pen.....

Thanks for looking..

I hope 2014 brings you everything you desire and more......

I'd love to hear from you, so leave a message, say 'Hi'..  xx